ICT news

• Boston Dynamics Pledges Not To Weaponize Its Robots

  06-10-2022 23:22 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Several robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics, are pledging not to support the weaponization of their products and are calling for others in the industry to do the same, according to a letter shared first with Axios. From the report: The open letter highlights the erosion of consumer trust in robots as among the reasons not to allow them to be used as weapons. "We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public, and capable
  
  Read more

• Biden Pardons All Federal Simple Marijuana Possession Offenses

  06-10-2022 22:41 via news.slashdot.org
  President Biden on Thursday announced that he is pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession and encouraged state governors to do the same for state offenses. He also directed federal officials to review how marijuana is classified under the Controlled Substances Act. From a report: "There are thousands of people who have prior federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result," Biden said in a st
  
  Read more

• Amazon's Glow Goes the Way of the Fire Phone and Dodo

  06-10-2022 22:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Amazon's Glow is no more. The tech giant has discontinued the children's device, which included an 8-inch display and a projector that could display games on a mat, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. ArsTechnica: You can't buy the Glow on Amazon's website anymore. According to Bloomberg, the device was on sale for $150 (down from $300) on Tuesday before it became listed as unavailable later that day. The publication cited slow sales as a reason for the product's demise. It also noted the device's focus
  
  Read more

• Celsius' Top 3 Execs Cashed Out $42M in Crypto Before Bankruptcy

  06-10-2022 21:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Crypto lender Celsius' top three executives withdrew $42.13 million in cryptocurrency between May and June 2022, right before the company suspended withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy, new court records show. From a report: According to a Statement of Financial Affairs filed late Wednesday, former CEO Alex Mashinsky, former CSO Daniel Leon and CTO Nuke Goldstein withdrew the funds largely from custody accounts in the form of bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), USDC (USDC) and CEL tokens (CEL). Over a d
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• 'Princeton Isn't Free - But It Could Be'

  06-10-2022 20:40 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Princeton University is so rich it has become a perpetual motion machine -- an institution that can operate with no outside financial support whatsoever. That's the claim made by Malcolm Gladwell, in a recent newsletter, and opposed by Harvard economics professor John Campbell, in a letter to The Browser. Gladwell is broadly correct. Campbell's quibbles might change the exact numbers, but Princeton really does seem to have reached the point at which it's capa
  
  Read more

• Big Tech, Banks, Government Departments Shred Millions of Storage Devices They Could Reuse

  06-10-2022 20:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, as well as banks, police services and government departments, shred millions of data-storing devices each year, the Financial Times has learnt through interviews with more than 30 people who work in and around the decommissioning industry and via dozens of freedom of information requests. From the report: This is despite a growing chorus of industry insiders who say there is another, better option to safely dispose of data: using computer software to secur
  
  Read more

• Top CVEs Actively Exploited by People’s Republic of China State-Sponsored Cyber Actors   

  06-10-2022 19:48 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: October 6, 2022
  CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) providing the top Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) used since 2020 by People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actors. PRC state-sponsored cyber actors continue to exploit known vulnerabilities to actively target U.S. and allied networks, including software and hardware companies to illegal
  
  Read more

• Popular Censorship Circumvention Tools Face Fresh Blockade By China

  06-10-2022 19:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Tools helping China's netizens to bypass the Great Firewall appear to be facing a fresh round of crackdowns in the run-up to the country's quinquennial party congress that will see a top leadership reshuffle. From a report: Greater censorship is not at all uncommon during countries' politically sensitive periods, but the stress facing censorship circumvention tools in China appears to be on a whole new level. "Starting from October 3, 2022 (Beijing Time), more than 100 users reported that at lea
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Toxic Air Pollution Particles Found in Lungs, Livers and Brains of Unborn Babies

  06-10-2022 18:40 via science.slashdot.org
  Toxic air pollution particles have been found in the lungs, livers and brains of unborn babies, long before they have taken their first breath. Researchers said their "groundbreaking" discovery was "very worrying," as the gestation period of foetuses is the most vulnerable stage of human development. From a report: Thousands of black carbon particles were found in each cubic millimetre of tissue, which were breathed in by the mother during pregnancy and then passed through the bloodstream and pl
  
  Read more

• Google Unveils Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro Smartphones

  06-10-2022 18:03 via tech.slashdot.org
  Alphabet's Google on Thursday said its new Pixel phones will deliver improved voice and camera features while bringing back facial recognition for unlocking the device as it seeks to better compete with Apple and Samsung Electronics. From a report: The company's Pixel 7 and 7 Pro devices offer more affordable prices than the dominant duo of the mobile market, coming in at $599 and $899, respectively, and introduce the second generation of Google's in-house Tensor chip. The 6.7-inch Pro version h
  
  Read more

• Australian Man Arrested in Alleged Scam of Optus Hack Victims

  06-10-2022 17:20 via slashdot.org
  The Australian Federal Police have arrested a 19-year-old Sydney man for allegedly trying to blackmail victims of a giant data breach at mobile-phone company Optus. From a report: The man allegedly texted 93 people who were affected by last month's hack of the Australian telecommunications provider, demanding they transfer A$2,000 ($1,300) to a bank account or face having their personal information be used for financial crimes, the AFP said in a statement Thursday. At this stage it appears none
  
  Read more

• The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet's Time

  06-10-2022 16:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  An obscure software system synchronizes the network's clocks. Who will keep it running? From a report: To solve the problem of time synchronization on the arpanet, computer scientist David Mills built what programmers call a protocol -- a collection of rules and procedures that creates a lingua franca for disparate devices. The arpanet was experimental and capricious: electronics failed regularly, and technological misbehavior was common. His protocol sought to detect and correct for those misde
  
  Read more

• Facebook Conducts 'Quiet Layoffs' By Urging Managers To Identify Certain Number of Workers as Underperforming

  06-10-2022 16:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders have given many hints that a reorganization is coming. Now, a specific number of workers are to be deemed "needs support," Insider has learned. From the report: The company is already telling some to find other jobs, leaving workers to call it "quiet layoffs." It told staff last week in a weekly Q&A with CEO Mark Zuckerberg that it was extending a hiring freeze that's been in place since May. Just before this meeting, executives told directors acros
  
  Read more

• AI Eye Checks Can Predict Heart Disease Risk In Less Than Minute, Finds Study

  06-10-2022 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: An artificial intelligence tool that scans eyes can accurately predict a person's risk of heart disease in less than a minute, researchers say. [...] Researchers developed a fully automated AI-enabled tool, Quartz, to assess the potential of retinal vasculature imaging -- plus known risk factors -- to predict vascular health and death. They used the tool to scan images from 88,052 UK Biobank participants aged 40 to 69. The researchers looked
  
  Read more

• Apple Asks Suppliers To Shift AirPods, Beats Production To India

  06-10-2022 12:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is asking suppliers to move some AirPods and Beats headphone production to India for the first time, in a win for the South Asia nation as it attempts to rise in the global supply chain. Nikkei Asia Review reports: The move is part of Apple's gradual diversification from China, as it looks to lower the risk of supply chain disruptions stemming from the country's strict zero-COVID policy and tensions with the U.S. Apple has been talking with a number of its suppliers about increasing produc
  
  Read more

• European Observatory NOEMA Reaches Full Capacity With Twelve Antennas

  06-10-2022 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  The NOEMA radio telescope, located on the Plateau de Bure in the French Alps, is now equipped with twelve antennas, making it the most powerful radio telescope of its kind in the northern hemisphere. Phys.Org reports: Eight years after the inauguration of the first NOEMA antenna in 2014, the large-scale European project is now complete. Thanks to its twelve 15-meter antennas, which can be moved back and forth on a specially developed rail system up to a distance of 1.7 kilometers long, NOEMA is
  
  Read more

• DeepMind's Game-Playing AI Has Beaten a 50-Year-Old Record In Computer Science

  06-10-2022 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: DeepMind has used its board-game playing AI AlphaZero to discover a faster way to solve a fundamental math problem in computer science, beating a record that has stood for more than 50 years. A year after it took biologists by surprise, AlphaFold has changed how researchers work and set DeepMind on a new course. The problem, matrix multiplication, is a crucial type of calculation at the heart of many different applications, from dis
  
  Read more

• Scientists Have Discovered a New Set of Blood Groups

  06-10-2022 04:02 via science.slashdot.org
  Chris Baraniuk, reporting for Wired: The unborn baby was in trouble. Its mother's doctors, at a UK hospital, knew there was something wrong with the fetus's blood, so they decided to perform an emergency C-section many weeks before the baby was due. But despite this, and subsequent blood transfusions, the baby suffered a brain hemorrhage with devastating consequences. It sadly passed away. It wasn't clear why the bleeding had happened. But there was a clue in the mother's blood, where doctors ha
  
  Read more

• Spotify Acquires Company That Detects Harmful Content In Podcasts

  06-10-2022 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  Spotify has purchased a company called Kinzen to help it detect and address harmful content in podcasts and other audio formats. Engadget reports: Kinzen uses machine learning and human expertise to analyze possibly harmful content and hate speech across multiple languages, Spotify said in a statement. It added that Kinzen will "help us more effectively deliver a safe, enjoyable experience on our platform around the world" and that the company's tech is especially suited to podcasts and other au
  
  Read more

• Meta To Increase Ad Load On Instagram

  06-10-2022 02:45 via meta.slashdot.org
  Following another quarter that saw marketers pull back on their ad spending, Meta today announced it's increasing its ad load on Instagram with the launch of two new ad slots. TechCrunch reports: Amid a slew of product updates for advertisers, including a music catalog for advertisers and a new ad format for Facebook Reels, the company said it will now allow advertisers to run ads on the Explore home page and in profile feeds. Meanwhile, though Instagram Reels began rolling out 30-second ads glo
  
  Read more

• Google Picks South Africa For Its First Cloud Region In Africa

  06-10-2022 02:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Tech giant Google has today announced the launch of a cloud region in South Africa, its first in the continent, playing catch-up to other top providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which made inroads into the continent a few years ago. Google said it is also building Dedicated Cloud Interconnect sites, which link users' on-premises networks with Google's grid, in Nairobi (Kenya), Lagos (Nigeria) and South Africa (Capetow
  
  Read more

• IceWM Reaches Version 3 After a Mere 25 Years

  06-10-2022 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  A new version of a quarter-century-old window manager shows that there's still room for improvement and innovation, even in established, mature tools. The Register reports: IceWM is [...] a traditional stacking window manager allowing you to open, move, and resize windows. It's relatively simple, easy, and quick to learn. By default, it also provides an app launcher and an app switcher, using the familiar Windows 95 model: a hierarchical start menu and a taskbar. If you do a minimal install of o
  
  Read more

• Crew Dragon Launches Safely, Carrying First Russian From US Soil In 20 Years

  06-10-2022 00:42 via science.slashdot.org
  Ars Technica's Eric Berger writes: Four days before Thanksgiving in 2002, space shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Among the seven crew members to the International Space Station was one Russian cosmonaut, Nikolai M. Budarin, making his third spaceflight. By then, as part of warming relations between Russia and the United States, cosmonauts had been flying on board the space shuttle for nearly a decade. The exchange program would have continued, but tragedy struck
  
  Read more

• The Internet Archive Is Building a Digital Library of Amateur Radio Broadcasts

  06-10-2022 00:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader and tech historian, Kay Savetz, shares a blog post about the Internet Archive's efforts to build a library of amateur radio broadcasts. Here's an excerpt from the report: Internet Archive has begun gathering content for the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC), which will be a massive online library of materials and collections related to amateur radio and early digital communications. The DLARC is funded by a significant grant from the Amateur Rad
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!